Morning Buzz
by incandescent 3 6 0
Summary: As the school bus' arrival is delayed, Blossom and Brick are stuck at the stop together. REDS.


**Title -** Morning Buzz

**Summary -** As the school bus' arrival is delayed, Blossom and Brick are stuck at the stop together. And Brick can't just leave - that would be admitting defeat. REDS.

**Pairing(s) -** Reds

**Rating -** T

**Status -** Oneshot; Complete

**Disclaimer -** I am not Craig McCracken and thus do not own the Powerpuff Girls.

**XXX**

"Mhm," Blossom hummed to her phone's receiver. As the speaker on the other end spoke in a buzzed and muffled voice, Brick shuffled over and seated himself down on the bench. He frowned and buried himself nose-deep into his jacket. It was quite cold out for early March, and he found himself shivering with every breeze that brushed over his skin.

What made his day even worse was the girl standing just before him, mumbling a response into her phone every now and then. Her voice, though soft as velvet it was, pierced through his chest like knives every time she spoke. Even at the lowest volume, even with the shortest sentence, he felt a jolt of irritation build up, and he felt like wringing her neck at this point.

"What's he sayin'?" He dared to speak up, knowing she'd look back at him with those flushed cheeks of hers. And she did. But it wasn't any friendly flush, it was a flush of embarrassment, he could tell. He'd startled her. She lifted a small hand to signal him to be patient. He huffed.

After some few moments, she ended the call and shoved the phone into her pocket, placing her school bag on a seat two spaces away him. "The bus is having some difficulties with gas. They're trying to find a way to refill the tanks. Until they're up and running, we're stuck here."

"Like hell am I gonna bear thirty minutes alone with _you_. Sayo-fucking-nara," he said gruffly, getting to his feet and walking away with his hands shoved into his pockets.

"You're such a _child_," she seethed.

"Am not!" he opposed, sounding childish against his best efforts.

She gave him a sneer that almost made him growl. "Need I say more?"

"I don't want your _company_."

"Swallow your pride and wait for the bus. The school doors don't open for another twenty minutes anyway."

Begrudgingly, he mindfully admitted that she was right. He secretly wished at least one of his moronic brothers was there to keep him occupied; anything to tear his attention away from her. But _no_ – the little shitheads have to keep up their image of being fashionably late. Of course, that's not what they call it, but it's what they mean nonetheless. And they keep their phones on silent until they wake up – if they _ever_ wake up, because, you know, skipping school is always a considerable option for them. But now he started to wonder just where Blossom's sisters could be. He knew that they were too goody-goody to ever come to school late on purpose, so they couldn't have done anything similar to his brothers.

"Are you going to sit down or stare into space?" Her voice – _holy fuck, her voice_ – violently ripped him out of his thoughts. He shot her the nastiest scowl he could muster up and took his seat, three empty spots separating the two of them. She sat in the seat next to the one where she laid her school bag, which was just a waste of space to him. Couldn't she have placed the bag on her lap or on the ground before her? Absolutely fucking ridiculous.

He noticed her stifling a yawn, her eyes all droopy. He scoffed. "What? Did you pull an all-nighter studying for the test we've got today?" She was such a fucking nerd.

"No," she said, with a slight pout. "Though I wish I did."

"_Geek_."

"Shut up!" she snapped, hunching her shoulders to hide those flushed cheeks beneath the fabric of her sweater. "I just..."

"Just?" he pressed, motioning for her to continue with a wave of his hand.

She was staring at her hands, bunched up in her lap. "I haven't had my coffee."

He took a minute to process that. "Coffee," he repeated, adding a bit of a deadpan to his monotone. "You drink _coffee_."

"Yes...What's wrong with it?" she mumbled, and the way in which she asked indicated that she knew full and well what was supposedly wrong with it.

"What the fuck are you, thirty seven?"

"It helps me wake up in the morning!" she defended herself, ignoring his look of disbelief and slight disgust. She sighed and massaged her temples. "I'm going to pass out."

"Do you drink it every morning?"

She raised her head and shifted her attention to him. "Yes, I do."

"How long has this been a thing?"

"I don't know...Four, maybe five, years?"

"You're telling me that you've been drinking coffee, consecutively, each morning, ever since you were twelve."

Again, she answered a slow, "Yes."

"Tch." He shook his head and looked off into the distance.

When he turned back to her, she was still hunched up, crinkling her nose rather cutely in a little frown. The bags underneath her eyes were easy to notice and she looked absolutely drained of energy. He had a feeling she was probably worried about that. She had an image to keep up and arriving to school looking like a zombie would result in some ego damage.

Not that he cared. He loved seeing her look so depressed, like a sad little puppy. He loved seeing the life sucked out of her usually vibrant eyes. _He loved it_.

He loved it so much that he barely noticed the coffee shop two blocks down.

...

Blossom timidly sipped her cup of warm, hot coffee, eyes downcast. Brick had his arms folded on the round, beige colored table, glaring daggers at her as she set her cup down, fingers skimming the edges of the white cover. The sound of small conversations mixed with laughter and metal clinking against each other was faint in the background of the shop. Brick pushed it all to the back of his mind.

"No cream _or_ sugar?" he asked her sharply.

Her attention shifted to him and then down at her cup. "No. I drink it black."

"But," his nose scrunched up, in a perplexed way that made her smile a bit, "sugar's the whole _point_ of coffee."

"Not to me." He watched her lift the cup back up to her pink lips.

"So then how does it energize you if it has no caffeine?"

She was still smiling. "This is a cup of freshly ground coffee beans that already contain about eighty to one hundred milligrams of caffeine. It's all I really need to wake up."

"_But it's bitter as fuck_."

She rolled her eyes. "It almost tastes like water if you don't pay much attention to it. Devoid of a flavor, if you will."

"I will not," he said blandly.

She thrust the cup in his direction. "Try it."

He looked at the cup, then at her, and then thought of his diminishing self respect. She was crinkling her nose again, and the life was returning back to her eyes. He snatched the cup, taking care not to touch her hand in the slighest.

Before it reached his mouth, however, her eyes widened and she yelped, "Wait!"

"_What_?" he snapped.

"Here." She picked up a thin red straw and handed it to him. He snatched that, too.

When he placed the straw in and slurped up the substance, he coughed not a second after ingesting it. "Gross," he rasped.

"I said not to pay much attention to it!" She gave him napkins. He begrudgingly wiped up the mass that he'd inadvertently spit out onto the table. "That's a quarter worth of wasted coffee that you owe me."

Okay. Okay. Don't pay much attention to it. Focus on something else. As he was mentally coaching himself, Brick subconsciously pulled the straw back up and looked at the girl before him. Blossom was watching him intently, one corner of her mouth slanted into a half smile. It hadn't been five minutes and she was back to looking exuberant as ever. He didn't know how long he sat there, just looking at her. Just her. And he found himself disappointed that she hadn't spoken up yet.

The smile had long since faded and been replaced with a redness that invaded her cheeks. "Brick," she said, and he paused. She placed her hand around the cup and tugged at it, unintentionally touching his own. He didn't realize he completely gulped down more than half of what had been left of the coffee. When he finally released his hold, he let her take the cup back. The pout that had now formed on her lips was definitely worth his longwinded taste test.

"Ugh," she grimaced, "You drank nearly all of it! That amounts up to a dollar that you owe me now."

He smirked and leaned back in his chair. "I find it cute how you think I'll actually pay you back."

She seemed to be prepared to retort, but she noticed some movement outside the glassy walls of the shop. She sighed in relief and gathered her belongings as Brick followed her gaze. "The bus is here," she said, and he followed after as she left.

...

The bus had stopped just before the bus pole. When Brick and Blossom had gotten to the front door on its side, it hissed as it opened and out jumped Boomer. "Hey, you guys!" he greeted, "Glad you could join us."

"What was the hold up?" Brick asked as they made their way inside. He let Blossom go in before himself. It's just an act of chivalry. Nothing else.

Once inside, Boomer turned his head to look at his older brother and said, "The gas tank got fucked up. Somebody ruptured it and the gasoline spilled out."

"And how exactly was this predicament fixed so quickly?" Blossom asked him as she took a seat next to Bubbles.

"Buttercup bent it back into shape and a bit of duct tape came in handy," the blonde girl answered.

"Who was the one to break it in the first place?"

"Who knows," Butch appeared suddenly, popping up behind the girls' seat.

Buttercup, beside him on the outer side of the seat, looked out through the pathway. "Yep, it's a mystery to all of us."

"What's a mystery to me," Brick started, "is why you two," he pointed at his younger brothers, "are out of bed and in this bus before I am."

Butch slowly lowered back down behind the seat and Boomer cleared his throat, pretending to be distracting by something outside one of the windows as the bus roared back into movement and began to drive down the street.

"What about your sisters?" Brick asked Blossom.

"Early cheer practice," Bubbles replied, almost instantaneously.

"Yeah. Early soccer practice," Buttercup said carelessly. A little bit of shuffling was heard in her seat by the remaining four, followed by a punch and thump. "Don't fucking touch me, shitface!"

"Ow, fucking Christ!" Butch complained, "Try not to give me a concussion, will you?"

"Hey, I thought you didn't have enough time for coffee this morning," Bubbles said, poking Blossom's shoulder.

The redhead shot a glance at Brick and smiled again before turning back to Bubbles. "I managed to get some while we were waiting for the bus to come."

Buttercup's head popped up, and she smirked. "Did you now?"

"She did," Brick said brusquely. "Now let's all shut the hell up so I could get to school peacefully and without any raging headaches."

"Dude, you need to take a hot cup of coffee and chill the fuck out," Butch remarked from his unseen spot in the window seat.

Blossom's smile grew into something more devious, and she said, "He did."

...

As the students trailed out from the bus, dispersing into the school, Brick stopped Blossom by the gates.

"Wh –" He held a crisp one dollar bill in front of her face to silence her. She blinked and steadily took it from him.

"It was one dollar, right?" he said, putting his hands back into his pockets.

"Yeah...it was," she confirmed, still wary.

"Today, after school, I'm going to go back to coffee shop and get that black, sugarless coffee."

She saw where this was going. A smile graced her features yet again, and he had no problem with it. "I thought you said it was too _bitter_."

"I think I've found something to distract me from that."

She blushed something fierce. "After school, then."

From a distance, Brick spotted their siblings peaking out and spying on them from behind a column. He noticed greasy bruises on Butch's knuckles when they stumbled out and pretended they weren't doing anything suspicious. Brick narrowed his eyes.

_Those motherfuckers_.

**END**

_I hate coffee without cream. I hate coffee without sugar. I hate coffee in general, just to answer any questions you might have._

_But I feel like Blossom's a sort of sugarless black coffee kinda girl, as much as I love her. So I went with my gut and wrote this oneshot as if my life depended on it._

_Thank you for reading, lovelies._

_Hugs and Kisses ;*_


End file.
